Archive for October, 2009

It’s done! Today, I booked the last hotels and some tours I needed to pre-book. Weekend after weekend, I spent with planning the trip, searching and booking hotels, cars or flights. Now, that I’ve finished all this, I’m ready for take-off. But my schedule says that I have to wait two weeks ;-) It’s good to know that now the phase of enjoyment starts.

It’s incredible how near the start of my trip already is. But there are still a lot of things that need to be done before take-off. It seems I have to earn my holidays. I never thought there is so much to organise. When you go on two- or three-weeks holidays it’s no problem if you forget something to take with you. But on a three-month trip you should really think about what you need.

At least I got all my flights and the hotels for the first two stops (Vancouver and Honolulu). Within the next days I intend to book the hotels for the different Hawaiian islands as well as my cars. Booking the hotels was quite fun. I only selected them based on price, region and stars. I got the name after I paid. The advantage of this way to book is that you get very cheap rates as high-quality hotels try to get rid of their free rooms. I will do the same for the remaining Hawaiian hotels.

What really annoys me is that you have to check if all work has been done. I changed the date of my Sydney fligth 10 days ago and still the passenger receipt has not been updated by Lufthansa. This document is vital as it has all my flights on it. Another problem is that Lufthansa seems not to be able to accept my APIS data as the flight to Hawaii is operated by Air Canada. I then tried to input my data there but Air Canada does not know my booking reference. So, I will do it the oldschool way: fill out the paper and hand it in to Lufthansa at the check-in.